Fantastic DIY 7 Color Laser Tutorial

Hereâ€™s another fantastic tutorial from Jay, a DIY lasers expert. See all of our DIY Laser Projects.

I finally finished my 7 color laser! For the guts of the project, I followed this great Laser tutorial on HacknMod. (by rog8811)

For the housing, I decided to go with a clear enclosure using ‘push on / push off’ clicky buttons. (I needed something with room for my build, which has heatsinks on all of the lasers – still pretty small though) The polycarbonate material is scratch resistant. It’s cool to be able to see inside the assembly of the three lasers and sled!

Important:This is a class 3B laser and should be used with care. Proper eye protection is recommended. It can instantly damage the eye if it is pointed directly into the eye. Even reflections can cause eye damage.

I just went for the 7 color laser, not the spiro. How Rog gets all of that to fit into his small box is beyond me. I thought I would share just a couple of things I found out doing this build. First, the pictures:

The Build:

I found out that this project is much more difficult than I had anticipated. Rog makes this kind of thing look easy, but it is very difficult to get all 3 lasers lined up perfectly!

Power Settings and Diodes:
I stayed pretty close to the recommendations by rog8811 from the tutorial linked above. Here are my settings…

O-like 10mW green – I picked the best one I had, which measured 9mW’s with a CR123.

You lose a lot through the optics in the sled. And it must also depend on the color of the laser, as to how much of it reflects off of the coatings on the PS3 turning mirror.

The Red started out at 42mW’s, and comes out at 26mW’s.

The blu-ray started out at 110mW’s and comes out at only 20mW’s.

The green started out at 9mW’s and comes out at 4mW’s.

Now just do the math for the ‘in-between’ colors! (yes, I tested them)

* Turquoise – 24mW’s

* Yellow – 30mW’s

* Magenta – 46mW’s

* White – 50mWâ€™s

Notes:

I bounced the dots off a mirror in the other room so that on the ’round trip’, the dots would be close to me. That way I could see if they were aligned. Because you want them to align at distance.

Also, they must be aligned at the aperture as well! This is easy for the red and blu-ray, because they are pointed at the splitter cube, but check for this when setting up your green, which must meet the other beams through the PS3 turning mirror.

I went with a little thread lock on the lens threads at both the focus ring, and the module. (get perfect focus before it dries)

I did this because the assembly needs to be so precisely aligned, that even the smallest movement can put the dots out of alignment at distance. Anyway, this is the coolest project I have done yet!

Final Results:

(Beam shots – with some smoke)

The alignment is definitely the key to the build, and is the most difficult part. Above, I mentioned a couple of things that I found useful for helping with this, but no matter what, it will be a chore to get it perfect. Very happy with these results! Thanks to rog8811 and Hack N Mod for showing his laser tutorial for the guts of this great project! – Jay

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